


nor are we forgiven

by kimaracretak



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Aromantic Stella, Case Fic, F/F, Lindsay has Stella-adoration problems, Mac is the best best friend Stella could have, Male-Female Friendship, Stella copes poorly with change, one-sided Lindsay/Stella
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of a New York summer, Stella and Aiden find a new version of okay</p>
            </blockquote>





	nor are we forgiven

There's nothing worse than New York in the summer.

Stella has learned this over the years, learned this lesson over sickly sweet rotting bodies and city-enforced brownouts. The heat brings out the worst in the city, always has, and one of these days the city is going to stop paying her enough overtime for her to keep up.

But that day is far in the future, and when her pager goes off at four twenty-seven in the morning she's up immediately, grabbing it off the bedside table as Aiden mumbles something unhappy into her shoulder blade. “Go back to sleep,” she says automatically running a hand through her partner's hair. Another stabbing in Midtown. The perfect way to start a Wednesday.

“I set the coffeemaker last night,” Aiden manages. Or something close enough to make no difference, considering the pillow she's currently trying to hide from the newly switched on bedside light under.

Stella swings herself out of bed and goes in search of jeans, wishing, not for the first time, that shorts were an acceptable part of a CSI's uniform. “You're a miracle,” she says over her shoulder, but Aiden's already asleep again. One of the holdovers from her own CSI days, stealing seconds of sleep whenever she could. She's beautiful, and something in Stella's stomach pulls tight and sad as she looks at her, aching for the days when Aiden would be rolling out of bed with her, making sure they weren't wearing each other's shirts and trading quiet morbid jokes on the train to the first scene of the day.

_Don't be stupid,_ Stella shakes herself out of her reverie and goes back to  making herself look presentable, if not necessarily good. These days she and Aiden can wear whatever clothes they want, and make utter fools of themselves laughing over real jokes at dinner. It's a newfound version of  _okay,_ one that's not quite settled on either of their parts, but it's been worth it.

 

*

 

Processing the scene isn't quick – nothing in Midtown is ever quick – but it is, at least, routine, and Stella gives silent thanks that it's Sheldon and Lindsay working the scene with her. Just because Mac and Danny seem to be working through their issues doesn't mean she wants to deal with either of them this early.

She grins at Sheldon when she catches him hiding a yawn behind his camera. “How long has it been since you've had a scene before eight?”

“Not long enough,” he sighs, edging his way around Lindsay's kit to get better shots of the body. “Hey, Lindsay, can you –”

“Yeah, sorry.” She rocks back on her heels, lifting her swab out of the way of the lens.

Stella bags a stray syringe, keeping half an eye on her two teammates. “Look on the bright side. It's too early for the Times Square costumed crowd to be out.”

“Oh my _g_ _od_.”

Stella turns to find Lindsay staring at her, wide-eyed. “You okay?” She hadn't seen anything off in her first look at the body, but surprises were _also_ routine.

Lindsay's cheeks are too pink for the still-bearable morning heat. “Yeah, I just – I'd never thought about trying to process a scene with the characters around before.”

_New girl, new girl, you_ like  _the new girl._ Stella bites back the first comment that comes to mind in favor of a softly joking, “Don't tell me Lindsey Monroe can face down the worst of the Montana wilderness but would run away from Mickey Mouse?”

“His head's too big,” Lindsey mutters, turning back to the body, and though Stella's laughter isn't unkind, she's glad it's lost in the rapid clicking of Sheldon's camera shutter.

 

*

 

It's hot enough by the time they get back to the lab that the air conditioner in the building makes her shiver. “You okay?” Sheldon's voice behind her seems too loud, echoing in the bright shiny openness of the new lab.

“Fine,” she says automatically. Bites her lip and tries to get her bearings. More than a month and she still doesn't have a handle on the patterns of the new building. Still can't stop whipping around to stare at every stray glint of light when she should be focused on her evidence.

“Okay,” he says, and she pushes aside the thought that he doesn't sound like he believes her in favour of being comforted by the fact that if he's going left to see Sid in the morgue she needs to go right to get to her office.

Mac finds her before she's found half the path she needs to, brushes his hand against hers in greeting and she stills fingers she hadn't realized were tapping out a restless beat against her leg. “Hey,” she manages, and allows herself to relax just a fraction in his familiar presence. Maybe she can follow him to his office and find hers from there – he, at least, understands how much the new building has thrown her.

He eyes her appraisingly. “How long have you – scratch that. How much coffee have you had?”

She resists the urge to check her watch, thinks of the _as much coffee as needed_ line that has been showing up in her to-do lists more and more frequently lately. “Not enough.”

Mac gives her a half-smile, tilts his head down the corridor. “C'mon. Next coffee's on me. Wait 'til you hear about the guy I watched Flack interview this morning.”

 

*

 

Normality re-asserts itself in the form of break room coffee, interview gossip, Mac's solid presence by her side, and the one-and-a-half wrong turns she takes trying to get to the layout room. _God, I really need to spend more time in this building,_ she thinks ruefully, not bothering to try and make her abrupt 180 degree turn look purposeful. Avoidance may have served her well in foster homes but she had thought she was past using it as a tactic on the job. Too many changes at once, maybe – but that train of thought veers too close to Aiden, and she shuts it down, fast.

She's barely gotten through half the vic's clothes when Lindsay bursts in waving an AFIS printout and chattering about poison traces in Stella's, well, the murderer's, well, it might've been the vic's, but definitely the murderer's at some point, and by the murderer she means Nate Gallagher, because he was definitely the one with the most prints on it, the syringe, and – . Stella holds up a hand to stop her there, because Lindsay's talking too fast, eyes too bright and attention-seeking desperate, resonating with too many parts of Stella for her to handle in a day – month – that she's spent on too many edges.

“Lindsay. Good job. Really, really good job.”

Every inch of Lindsay radiates pride. “Thank you, ma'am.”

Stella tries to make her smile gentle, tries to look not at all like the only thing she wants to do is leave the room. “I need to finish this, to be sure. But tell Mac what you've found, and then find Detective Maka.”

“Tell me what?” Mac asks from the doorway, at the same time as Lindsay's smile grows impossibly wider and she says, “ _Yes_ , ma – sir!”

She changes address and loses the smile and launches straight back into her findings about the syringe, and Stella takes the moment to shut her eyes and breathe, _breathe._ She can feel Mac's stare on the back of her neck even as she's sure he's the picture of perfect attention to Lindsay.

Quiet falls too soon for Stella's liking, the door clicking shut behind Lindsay to leave her alone with Mac and the air conditioner. So much for her normality.

Mac doesn't quite say _you're going to break her heart,_ but he says, “She's very invested in this. In you,” and that's almost worse.

“I know,” Stella sighs. Tugs a hand through her hair, makes a small exasperated noise when she disentangles a pen from her curls. He had said that – both _that_ s about Aiden, once upon a time and he had, unusually for him, been right only about one. Aiden, it turned out, had not only been invested in her job for reasons that went beyond Stella, but was perfectly fine with being very-good-friends-who-split-an-apartment-and-regularly-slept-together with her. Not that Mac knew that second part. “I'll talk to her tomorrow.” And then, seeking some inarticulable reassurance, adds, “She reminds me of...” Even then, she can't quite bring herself to say Aiden's name.

“Have you seen her recently? Aiden?”

Not quire what she wanted.  Stella flinches, tries to cover it with a shrug.  _More than I can tell even you, Mac._ “Yeah. A few times.”

Mac's eyes narrow. “How is she?”

“She's --” _fine,_ Stella almost says, but she knows it's a lie before the thought has fully formed. _Fine_ doesn't do justice to the way Aiden has crawled inside Regina's story to try to make things right from the inside, no words do. But it's not completely wrong, either: Aiden's spiraling, not falling. “She's still Aiden.”

“Good,” Mac says slowly, though his look adds _I know you're not telling me something important and I know you're going to tell me sooner rather than later_.  And _that_ 's comforting, really, knowing that he'll be there when her secret needs telling. “Anything else?”

She could tell him now, if she wanted, pretend she thought he was asking if there was anything else about Aiden, but … she purses her lips, shakes her head. “Nope. No, we're – we're good.”

He inclines his head in farewell, and he's halfway out the door before he adds, “Oh, and, Stella?”

“Yeah?” She turns around. His smile is asymmetrical and a little too knowing.

“Next time you see her – tell her I'm glad she's okay.”

“Yeah,” she says again, a lot too fast and a lot too certain, and she knows that even if that wasn't _telling_ tellingit was telling Mac exactly what there was to tell. The relief that flips in her heart at the thought is hardly even a surprise.

 

*

 

“Saw your scene on the news,” Aiden greets her when she gets home. She's sprawled on the couch with private investigator's exam review materials, looking enviably not-overheated in a thin NYPD tanktop and shorts that hardly deserved the name.

Stella groans, drops her head against the cool wood of the door for a moment, sighs her way to the bedroom to get changed. “I thought we cleared that before the tourists descended.” Aiden collapses into giggles, and Stella yanks her shirt over her head, preparing for the inevitable. “What?” It comes out a bit sharper than she'd intended.

Aiden doesn't seem to notice, still choking on her laughter as she says, “Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean, if you take away everything but – but the scene tape – I guess, sure, yeah, okay, you cleared it, sure.”

Stella slams the dresser drawer shut with more force than strictly necessary, wondering just who in scene cleanup she was going to have to yell at tomorrow. As if she wasn't already dreading the conversation she was going to have to have with Lindsay enough. “Of all the amateur little –”

“I thought it was _hilarious_ ,” Aiden says. Stella resists the urge to stick her tongue out at her partner's retreating back and heads for the kitchen to take some of her frustration out on defenseless fruits for dinner.

The air conditioner hums in  the apartment, loud enough to be comforting but not quite loud enough to drown out  Aiden's mutterings to herself as she  studies . Stella sneaks glances at her from her post at the kitchen counter,  contemplates tossing an apple slice at the other woman just to see what would happen.

_That_ childish impulse gets the better of her, but it's entirely worth it when she manages to land the slice right down the front of Aiden's shirt.

“Stel _la!_ ” Aiden shrieks as she tries to throw her notebook in the air, retrieve the apple, and prevent herself from falling off the couch all at once.

“Sorry,” Stella gasps through her laughter, clinging to the counter for support and, oh, she's glad she put the knife down first. “Aiden, sorry, I couldn't resist...”

Aiden settles her things and manages a dignified exit form the couch cushions, sways her way over to the kitchen. “Sorry, yeah, I could make you sorry,” she grins.

“That a promise?” Stella asks, voice a bit lower than she'd meant it to be.

“ _Oh_ yeah.” And there's nothing childish at all in _her_ movements now, nothing at all in the way she circles round Stella and collects her wrists in one hand and her hair in the other, in the way she drapes the hair in a loose ponytail over Stella's left shoulder and busies herself kissing her way down the newly exposed skin.

Stella hisses a breath in sharply through her teeth, overheating already from even the featherlight touch of lips against her neck. “Aiden, god, Aiden, not _fair_.”

“Never promised fair,” Aiden says, and Stella hears the almost imperceptible hitch in her voice as Aiden's hand snakes around to her stomach, dips just barely below the waistband of her shorts. “Promised _sorry._ ”

She bites her lip, tightening her grip on the counter as Aiden's fingers brush against the damp cotton of her underwear. “I am sorry, Aiden, I _am –_ ” Her last word trails off into a moan as Aiden presses against her, _hard,_ and then spins her around and kisses her.

And all thoughts of dinner and Lindsay and the heat and even _sorry_ vanish under Aiden's demanding lips and wandering hands. Stella gasps into Aiden's kiss and pulls her closer, ignores the counter digging uncomfortably into her back and thinks, _Yes. We're going to be fine._

 


End file.
